personalities great in art, in letters, in politics, or simply in
the world, could see on the big sofa during the gatherings in
Allegre's exclusive Pavilion: the Dona Rita of their respectful
addresses, manifest and mysterious, like an object of art from some
unknown period; the Dona Rita of the initiated Paris. Dona Rita
and nothing more--unique and indefinable." He stopped with a
disagreeable smile.

"And of peasant stock?" I exclaimed in the strangely conscious
silence that fell between Mills and Blunt.

"Oh! All these Basques have been ennobled by Don Sanche II," said
Captain Blunt moodily. "You see coats of arms carved over the
doorways of the most miserable caserios. As far as that goes she's
Dona Rita right enough whatever else she is or is not in herself or
in the eyes of others. In your eyes, for instance, Mills. Eh?"

For a time Mills preserved that conscious silence.

"Why think about it at all?" he murmured coldly at last. "A
strange bird is hatched sometimes in a nest in an unaccountable way
and then the fate of such a bird is bound to be ill-defined,
uncertain, questionable. And so that is how Henry Allegre saw her
first? And what happened next?"

"What happened next?" repeated Mr. Blunt, with an affected surprise
in his tone. "Is it necessary to ask that question? If you had
asked HOW the next happened. . . But as you may imagine she hasn't
told me anything about that. She didn't," he continued with polite
sarcasm, "enlarge upon the facts. That confounded Allegre, with